April 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 27

italized on the momentum of the
recreation facility to create a new,
revitalized " live where you play "
community. The change is creating
a long-term revenue source for the
city and its recreational offerings.
In all cases, successful park and
recreation directors talked about
the importance of understanding
the marketplace and offering programs and services that met the
public's needs and willingness to
pay for services.

Success builds trust
with citizens and
stakeholders.

(5) Leveraging Special Taxes:
Many agencies took advantage of
special taxing systems to improve
parks and recreation infrastructure. Conventional ideas ranged
from the use of hospitality and
accommodations taxes to finance
tourism-related projects such as
parks, convention centers and athletic fields, and " penny " sales taxes used for capital improvement
projects. Novel taxing systems included the creation of municipal
improvement districts (MIDs) in
blighted neighborhoods or areas
of town that needed improvements
to encourage development and the
use of federal New Market Tax
Credits for the development of
recreation and athletic facilities as
part of commercial and residential
development of a former brownfield site. Successful agencies highlighted the need to have someone

on staff who is responsible
for identifying these innovative taxing mechanisms and working
with city finance
and planning departments to identify new opportunities.
(6) Partnerships:
The
directors
continually mentioned the partnerships they developed to assist with
capital funding. For
example, the Irmo-Chapin Recreation Commission,
city of Aiken and Greenville
County all specifically mentioned
that private special-interest groups
approached them with project
ideas that met defined needs within the community and provided
fiscal resources to get the project
off the ground. The expectation
was that the park and recreation
department would find additional
funding and manage the project's
development, implementation and
operations. These large-scale projects, such as the development of the
MESA Soccer Complex, a 60-acre,
16-field soccer facility in Greenville
County, were pursued when they
were able to meet a clear need in
the community.
Conclusion
The major take away from this
project was that success builds
trust with citizens and stakeholders, and that trust often led to the
acquisition of new resources for
facilities and programs. While
there were some creative strategies being employed (novel taxing
mechanisms, different entrepre-

neurial approaches), agencies were
able to leverage the success of earlier innovations and creativity into
broader and stronger community
support. Creating new strategies
and/or repositioning agencies and
getting that first " win " often led
to the public and decisionmakers
wanting more.
Detailed references for this article
are available at www.parksandrecreation.org/2016/April/Creative-Strategies-for-Financing-Parks-and-Recreation.
Don Rockey is a professor in the
Department of Kinesiology, Recreation and
Sport Management at Coastal Carolina
University (drockey@coastal.edu). Bob
Barcelona is an Associate Professor at the
University of New Hampshire (bob.
barcelona@unh.edu). Bob Brookover is a
Senior Lecturer at Clemson University
(bob@clemson.edu). Dustin Thorn is an
Assistant Professor at Coastal Carolina
University (dthorn@coastal.edu). Dominic
Saturday is an undergraduate student at
Coastal Carolina University (dsaturday@
coastal.edu).

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April 2016 - Parks & Recreation

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